Hot cakes: Galaxy S3 sales surpass 10 million in less than two months

When Samsung launched its Galaxy S3 flagship smartphone in London on May 29, its head of mobile communications, JK Shin, confidently claimed sales of the high-end device would top 10 million by the end of July.

Anyone who at the time believed this was simply Samsung hyperbole in a cutthroat industry where talking big is all part of the game may be interested to learn that the Korean tech giant has, indeed, done exactly what it said it would do.

That makes initial sales of its popular predecessor, the S2, look positively sluggish, with that handset taking five months – impressive at the time – to reach the same milestone when it launched in 2011.

Speaking to South Korean news agency Yonhap on Sunday, Shin confirmed that Samsung, the world’s biggest handset maker, had surpassed its goal by selling an average of 190,000 S3 devices a day since launching it in Europe at the end of May and in the US the following month.

By the end of July, the critically acclaimed Android-powered smartphone will be available from 296 carriers in 145 countries – making it Samsung’s biggest launch ever of a handset.

The cutting-edge device, which features a 4.8-inch screen and face-recognition technology, was praised by DT’s mobile expert Jeffrey Van Camp when he got his hands on it recently, describing it as “the hot phone of the moment.”

With the S3 having quickly established itself as a handset to be reckoned with, the attention is now turning to Samsung’s main rival, Apple, to see if it can dazzle consumers with the next iteration of its iPhone, expected to be unveiled in September or October. Sure, Apple sold a colossal 35.1 million iPhones in the first three months of this year, but with more high-end, feature-rich Android phones coming to market, it’ll have to pull out all the stops to maintain those kinds of figures.

Indeed, the so-called iPhone 5 is expected to undergo its biggest ever redesign since first appearing on the scene in 2007, when it revolutionized the smartphone market.